Flipping excitement

INDIANAPOLIS — Excitement.

That seems to be the buzzword coming out of this weekend’s Flipping Finance Challenge.

Excitement about the event itself.

Excitement about the connections made.

Excitement about the future of Jay County.

A group led by Jay County Development Corporation took part in Indiana Bond Bank’s Flipping Finance Challenge on Friday and Saturday in Indianapolis, coming home with ideas for improving healthy eating habits, expanding public transportation, creating new events, developing a new “brand” and the need to better market Jay County assets outside of the county.

“I’m most excited about the enthusiasm that people we would have never met without this event have for Jay County,” said Ami Huffman, director of Jay County Community Development. “It was nice to hear so many good things that they saw in us, that they wanted to be part of. Everyone that we worked with expressed interest in continuing to work with us after the Flipping Finance event.”

Participating communities — Jay County, Starke County and Bloomington — presented attendees with a selection of challenges and then spent the next three-plus hours available to answer questions and provide information. The participants then spent the overnight hours brainstorming solutions to present to the communities.

Jay County’s representatives chose Indiana University students Colton Ferguson, Madison Howell, Nino Lazariia and Garrett Wright as their winning team.

The group tackled the “An Apple a Day” challenge, which addressed the fact that Jay County has high levels of infant mortality, obesity, smoking and opioid use. Their solution targeted three goals — incentivizing healthy food purchases, creating a local grocery delivery service and expanding the availability of public transportation through LifeStream.

The team went on to present its ideas to everyone in attendance, finishing just one vote short of winning the overall challenge.

Other ideas presented to help solve Jay County’s challenges included:

•Creating a “culture council” of representatives from local organizations such as Arts Place, Jay Community Center, Jay County Fair Board, Jay County Civic Theatre and others to coordinate resources and plan events.

•Build on the success of the Tri-State Gas Engine and Tractor Association Show by hosting a STEM Fair for surrounding colleges and universities in the late fall/winter, essentially positioning the county as a place where technology of the past and future come together.

•Rebranding the community as a place that is in the center of a lot of place and offers access to Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Dayton and others while still owning its small-town atmosphere

•The need for an extensive marketing plan to take advantage of untapped potential in an effort to draw more residents, tourism and business start-ups.

In addition to the solutions that were presented, Flipping Finance was also a valuable opportunity to make connections from across the state, said Jay County Development Corporation executive director Travis Richards.

“I’m excited to try to bring the teams that we worked with into our community to get an even better feel for us and how we can best work together to come up with and implement the solutions that they had started on over the weekend,” he added.